Elements of Game Design part 2- Art Direction

The role the Art Director plays is crucial to the visual style of their team’s game. They work with the game designers to visualise everything, from characters to the tiniest piece of scenery. It is very important for every element of the game to abide by their design principles such as levels of realism or use of colour, all to ensure the game’s universe is consistent and aesthetically pleasing. Poorly developed visual style would be immensely detrimental to the impression a game makes, and it is important for netting a target audience and generating an atmosphere that people will remember the game for. Art Director is a highly paid, high-ranking role within the developer, as it requires the most creativity and skill to ultimately define the visuals of an entire game.

Alongside a Lead Artist, the Art Director will analyse the Design Document and create a second part to it called the Art Specifications Document. They use this as a way of conveying their vision to the other artists working on the project, therefore descriptions must be thorough. This is also where the technicalities such as texture budgets and Polygon counts are defined. These technical specifications are mostly decided on by the Lead Artist who has more interaction with the development team, and works with scheduling and assigning tasks. This is only how things work in the game development environment- in Film, the Art Director has essentially the role of the Lead Artist, with the real visual mastermind being referred to as the Production Designer. While the terminology may be different, the importance of the roles is basically still the same.

If I were to focus on ultimately becoming an Art Director, I would of course need to work my way up the ranks. Ultimately I would essentially need to become really good at my work, while expressing creativity without deviating from the boundaries of my assignments.

As well as artistic talent, being “good at” one’s role in the company would involve general desirable working qualities such as ability to meet deadlines and communicate with others. Basically be really impressive at everything you must do, and make sure you get noticed.

As I stand now, of course my general skills need a lot of work. So far this year I feel I have really been improving in my ability to generate ideas, at least when it comes to the speed in which they become designs I’m happy with. However my speed in recording these designs leaves much to be desired- my greatest weakness in my opinion is still my drawing speed.

Time management is a difficult one, but it’s something I know I am able to work on. The most difficult abilities to develop are those concerning people skills as of course I’m naturally pretty introverted and not much of a team player! But of course, part of the process of moving up the development hierarchy would involve working with the same team for a long period of time, so I’m sure I’d get used to how they work and taking on different roles within the team… who knows. Maybe it could happen.